


Infinity Seats

by TheFandomLesbian



Series: Spencer's Mr. Mayor One-Shots [1]
Category: Mr. Mayor - Fandom
Genre: Chairs, Comedy, Gen, Humor, It amused me greatly, Los Angeles, Minor Injuries, Mr. Mayor - Freeform, This is not very well-written and I'm not sorry, Tina Fey - Freeform, city government
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29814654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFandomLesbian/pseuds/TheFandomLesbian
Summary: When Jayden accidentally fires the moving company the day before a huge event in STAPLES stadium, the city officials have no other option but to begin to move more than two thousand folding chairs by themselves.
Series: Spencer's Mr. Mayor One-Shots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2191623
Kudos: 1





	Infinity Seats

**Author's Note:**

> Woo! The first fic in the Mr. Mayor fandom. (It may be the only fic in the Mr. Mayor fandom, but... Well, I enjoyed writing it, so there's that.)

Striding through the open floor of the STAPLES stadium, the five city officials lifted their heads, admiring the shiny gloss on the floor, the way it squeaked under their shoes. “This floor is prettier than my grandmother’s heirloom wedding rings that I lost when I gave them to a Russian spy,” Jayden said, nodding his head. 

Arpi drank in the sight of the stadium. “While I oppose most athletic events and the materialistic, competitive lifestyles they represent, I do think this will make a suitable venue for our  _ Save the Ocean with Frank Ocean and Friends _ concert. How are we on sales?” 

“Sold out last night,” Mikaela provided with a nod. 

Tommy averted his eyes. “Even  _ with _ the tacky title.” 

Clapping her hands, Arpi’s eyes gleamed. “I knew it. I knew LA would come together to stop the fracking off our shoreline.” She grinned back at them. “We’re going to have all those drills off the shore in no time.” 

“And before you ask, I already forwarded all of the allotted profit money to the charities we listed, and the rest of the profit margin will go to providing new avenues for renewable energy per the city budget—Chair of the Budget Committee is  _ on it. _ ” Tommy strode out into the center of the floor and spun around. “Say… do you guys think I could meet some basketball players while we’re here? I think Kyle Kuzma may be in town.” 

Mikaela perked up. “Not a half bad idea—”

“Stop it before I spritz both of you in the face like a cat on the counter,” Arpi snapped. 

“Mr. Kwapis?” They all turned at the sound of the greeting where a man stood on the bleachers with a clipboard. “Some movers have arrived outside with the materials for tonight’s concert. They need you to sign since you made arrangements for everything.”

Neil’s eyes widened. “Oh, I’m the mayor. Should I…?” 

“No, sir, I’ve got it! The director of communications can handle the job!” Jayden plodded off after the man, up the stairs on the bleachers and then out of sight where they exited. 

“I think that means he definitely can _ not _ handle the job.” Tommy tucked his clipboard under his arm and started to go up the bleachers after him, but Mikaela cut him off, wagging a finger at him before he could leave. 

“No, remember? We promised Jayden we will try harder to trust him with things. I’m  _ sure _ he can sign some paperwork without setting the whole world on fire. He’s smarter than we give him credit for.” Arpi snorted at Mikaela’s insistence. “Okay, so maybe he’s  _ just as _ smart as we give him credit for.”

Tommy inhaled deeply, and he descended the two stairs back onto the floor of the stadium. “I suppose. Say, sir, what is going to happen to LA’s drills and fracking materials once we’ve pulled them up off the ocean floor? That’s going to be a lot of material waste. I’ll need to factor that into the budget to safely dispose of things.”

Neil waved him off. “No, no worries! Some Florida towns are buying all of LA’s drills and fracking stuff to throw them onto the coast over there.” 

Brow furrowing, Tommy glanced at Mikaela, who opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, but before she could speak, Arpi cut in. “Wait a minute—you mean to tell me I’ve spent the past four months orchestrating this just so you can sell the stuff to kill fish on the other side of the country? How is that fixing our problem? Or cutting back on environmental damage? The point was to  _ get rid _ of the carcinogens, not move them around.”

Tommy held up a finger. “I hate to agree with her, sir.” Arpi glared at him as he spoke. “ _ But _ she raises a point. If the city gets word that you sold all of our fracking materials to other places that still  _ use _ fracking, it could make this whole thing crumble like a stale cookie.” 

“Yeah,” Mikaela echoed, “terrible for PR and counterproductive in the long-term.” 

“But—profits!” They ganged around Neil. “We needed a bigger profit margin so we could use leftover money for the renewable energy we want to tout here. That’s why I did it. There won’t be any waste! And we won’t have to pay to discard anything. Florida is paying  _ us _ to get rid of our old junk. How lucky is that?” 

“But we didn’t  _ need _ extra money, sir, I sent all of you a long, detailed review of the budgetary plans to institute solar power in ward one and geothermal in ward three based off of the profits from this event. That was laying the groundwork.” Tommy glanced back at Arpi, hoping she would provide some support. 

She crossed her arms. “I hate to agree with Mr. Tomas.” Sarcasm dripped from her lips, and she eyed him deviously. “But he is correct. The budgetary plans were thorough and complete if a bit worrisome on some fronts—”

“I got your critique, Arpi, and we are  _ not _ going to burn palm trees to create more energy. LA has enough fires without misused city equipment starting more of them.” 

She squared up. “Who’s to say it would be misused?” 

Jayden trotted back down the stairs, wiping his hands off on his pants. “Sorry, guys, false alarm. Movers had the wrong address.” He tucked his hands in his pockets. “So now what’s left to do? Getting set up for tonight, I mean.”

Eyes narrowing, Mikaela scrutinized him. “What do you  _ mean, _ false alarm? This is STAPLES stadium. Nobody is going to be delivering things here by accident.” 

“Told you he couldn’t do it,” Tommy mumbled to her ear. She ignored him. 

Jayden frowned. “Well, I mean, they had, like, a gazillion folding chairs on their truck. This is a stadium. We don’t need chairs. We have the bleachers. Where would we put them?” 

Mouth hanging open, Arpi enunciated, “On the  _ floor! _ ”

He tucked his chin in, frowning. “No. Then where would the musicians perform? They need the floor to do their musician thing. It’s not like they have a stage.” 

“They’re going to  _ assemble _ a stage—Jayden, what did the movers say?” Tommy put his hands on his hips. 

“I dunno, they just apologized for the error, said they had to get to their next job and unloaded all the crap in the parking lot. I figured the stadium can clean it up.” Jayden shrugged it off. 

Crossing her arms, Arpi tilted her head. “Just out of curiosity… Until this moment, what did you think the words  _ floor seats _ meant in terms of concert going?” He considered a moment, and then he shrugged again. “Let me guess: you’ve never been to a concert where floor seats were a thing.”

“I’ve never been to a concert at all—” 

Mikaela interrupted, “What are we going to do?” They could all make fun of Jayden later, but right now, they needed to figure out how to move the seats onto the floor of the STAPLES center before tomorrow night. “We have to call the movers back. It’s over a hundred degrees outside. There’s no way we’re going to be able to move all the seats they left out there by ourselves.” 

Neil waved her off. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll call the moving company. I’m the mayor, I get what I want.” He pulled out his phone and walked away. 

Tommy nodded in agreement. “I’ll call some of the musicians who will be here tonight and see if any of them have their own staging or lighting equipment to save time on setup.”

“I’ll split the list with you,” Mikaela offered, “and we’ll save some time.” 

“I’ll talk to the manager of STAPLES and see if there can be any staff spared to help set up in the absence of the movers.” Arpi headed up the stairs of the bleachers toward the platform, and the others dispersed across the floor. 

Jayden spun around, looking after each of them. “Wait—guys, what should I do? You didn’t give me a job?” 

Arpi whirled and fixed her gaze on him from above. “Sit down, shut up, and don’t look at or talk to anyone who isn’t one of us for the next twenty-four hours. You’ve done enough.” 

They dissipated in their directions, minds set on the tasks before them. 

An hour later, they all returned to the floor of the stadium. Neil slid his phone into his back pocket. “The movers already booked over us. They won’t be available again until next Tuesday.” 

“Didn’t you offer to make it worth their while?” Arpi objected. “C’mon, Moneybags, you’re in government now. Sometimes you have to buy people off. You should be familiar with that.”

“I am, and I tried. They booked over us with Jeff Bezos. I can’t do anything about that.” He glanced at her. “I see you didn’t come back with any support staff.”

“They’re off right now. Their eighteen hour shift doesn’t start until the musicians and audience begins to arrive. The manager won’t call anyone in to come help, and I can’t ask them to overwork their staff because a city official made an oopsie.” 

Tommy awkwardly cleared his throat. “Frank Ocean’s team and the other musicians are going to bring their own staging equipment, but they won’t be in town until late tonight. We’re going to need to have this room set up well before then.” Mikaela nodded, raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms, shuffling her feet on the squeaky floor. 

Rocking back on her heels, Arpi planted her hands on her hips. “So what do we do now? Cancel?” 

“I think that’s our only option.” Neil rubbed his face. “Cancel, issue a public apology, and refund everyone’s money.”

“Uh—no.” Tommy cut in, walking between them. “No, cancelling is  _ not _ an option. I already funneled several million dollars into ocean pollution relief charity organizations. We can’t get that money back. Between having to pay the musicians, the stadium, the materials providers, the staff—if we don’t get the money we are supposed to make off of this event, it will bankrupt the city budget. We’ll be asking for prison inmates to help us cut down shoefitti.” 

Shaking her head, Mikaela pulled him back. “Tommy, there are  _ five _ of us. Really, four, because everyone over sixty counts as a half in terms of manual labor. Arpi pees when she laughs, and the mayor throws his back out when he sneezes.”

Arpi opened her mouth to defend them, but Neil touched her arm, shaking his head. “Don’t. She’s making our case.” She reconsidered and fell silent.

Mikaela continued, “There are twenty-five  _ hundred _ chairs. That’s five hundred chairs for each one of us. We don’t even have anything to move them from the parking lot to the floor in mass! Each of us will have to go up and down these stairs two hundred and fifty times. One of us will get hurt.” 

Making a face, Arpi tilted her head. “When did you get so good at math?” 

“Around the time somebody accidentally fired the movers and left us over two thousand folding chairs to move by ourselves!” 

Jayden was silent, his lips pressed together where he sat on the corner of the bleachers. “Can I speak yet?”

“No.” Arpi held up her hand. “Okay. We’re wasting time. We have six hours to move twenty-five hundred folding chairs. I’m going to get started. Jayden, c’mon.” 

“Wait, wait, wait, I can call Orly and her friends out of school… Say it’s a field trip, and they’ll get a close up with STAPLES stadium if they come help out the mayor. They’ll get to meet all of us, and, y’know, maybe a musician, in exchange for moving seats—”

“This situation may be dire, Mr. Mayor, but I fail to see how the city of Los Angeles can stand by violating child labor laws—” Mikaela swatted Arpi in the arm to silence her. “Hey! Are you saying you  _ condone _ his plan?” 

Tommy gave a half-laugh. “Anything that will keep us from having to move all those chairs by ourselves? I don’t care what the plan is.” 

“It’s not child labor if they  _ volunteer _ to do it,” Mikaela argued. “And in exchange for meeting Frank Ocean…” 

“I still don’t know who that is,” Arpi admitted. “Fine. You make your calls and get us some help. I’m going to start moving chairs. There is a new episode of  _ American Pickers _ on tonight, and I don’t want to miss it.” She grabbed Jayden by the back of his shirt and tugged him up the stairs. 

“Can I talk  _ now? _ ”

“Depends what you’re going to say.”

“That I’m very sorry.” 

“We know, buddy.”

“Am I forgiven?” 

“We’ll see. It depends on how much my back hurts tomorrow.” 

Mikaela and Tommy headed after them, and in the parking lot, the stacks of folded chairs waited for them, the metal hot under the boiling sunlight. Arpi was the first to be brave enough to grab two of them and hold on as the heat burned her palms, taking one chair into each hand and turning to go back into the building. “They’re only going to get hotter the longer you stare at them!” she called after herself. 

Tommy took off his suit jacket and used it to protect his hands. “Here—Jayden, help me drag these over to the shade. Our hands are going to be blistered if we carry all of these hot chairs.”

They started dragging them into the shade of the building, nearer the entrance, while Mikaela followed Arpi back to the bleachers and down the stairs. In a row, they began to set the chairs up. Neil was in the corner talking to Ms. Adams, asking permission to  _ please send Orly and fourteen of her friends out for a field trip to the STAPLES stadium, he had a wonderful opportunity and he would just be beside himself if some students weren’t able to take advantage of it. _

“You think she’s stupid enough to believe that?” Arpi asked Mikaela. 

She shrugged. “He’s talking to the woman who made the TikTok to announce that Gregory was closed because a palm tree fell on the school. I think she’d believe anything.” 

“Huh. Weird.” 

An hour later, the chairs on the floor grew in number, though far too few at a time, and the bus that was supposed to contain Orly and her friends still hadn’t arrived. Arpi’s knees hurt. Neil’s back hurt. Tommy’s head hurt. Jayden’s stomach hurt—at least, until Mikaela ordered Postmates for all of them, and everyone except Arpi took a break to eat. 

“Arpi! You’re going to lose your wind if you don’t fuel up.” Mikaela tried to entice her by shaking the bag of vegan biryani she’d ordered for Arpi. “Come sit down.”

“You all fail to understand that if I sit down now, I probably will not be getting back up again.” 

She didn’t stop moving, and when she seemed to tire out more, she started carrying the chairs three at a time, as if to expedite the process. Mikaela abandoned her plate, only half-eaten, to help. “She’s going to hurt herself if we don’t stop her.” Jayden got up and followed them, and they pursued Arpi out of the building, where she was grabbing another stack of chairs. “Arpi, wait, you’re going to wear yourself out.”

“Wearing myself out is a bridge we burned about an hour ago.” 

“Hey, guys!” 

They both looked back at Jayden. “Is he allowed to talk yet?” Mikaela whispered to Arpi, who nodded. “What, Jayden?”

He pointed to Arpi’s bicycle. “There’s a big bike seat. We can stack chairs on top of it. We could do, what, ten or fifteen at a time like that?” 

“Jayden, if you damage my bike…” Mikaela fixed a baleful gaze on Arpi, and she cut herself off. “What the hell, let’s give it a shot. I don’t think I’m going to be doing much pedaling after today, anyway.” She steadied the bike on the kickstand while they stacked the chairs up onto the wide seat, one Arpi had put on several years ago when the small one had started to give her lower back pain. 

She could not pinpoint the back pain anymore. 

They rolled the bike to the mouth of the stairs, unloaded the fifteen chairs, and then rolled it back outside, loading up again and again. Orly and her friends entered. “What can we do to help?”

Neil was carrying two chairs down the stairs. “Grab some chairs. They all have to be set up by tonight night.”

Orly frowned. “I thought we were supposed to be meeting some famous musicians.”

“Yeah, once this place is all set up, there will be some musicians tonight, and you can shake hands and get autographs with whoever you like.”

“Dad, this is like, a thousand chairs.”

Mikaela handed two chairs to Tommy, and he headed down the stairs with them. “Actually, it’s only two thousand now. A few hours ago, it was five hundred more.” Orly made a face. “Please, help us.” 

Orly shook herself. “Blink twice if you’re being held against your will, any of you. Ceviche, c’mon, I guess we’re… carrying chairs for the rest of the school day.” 

Arpi and Jayden rolled another massive stack of chairs to the mouth of the stairs. “I’m glad you had this idea, Jayden. This worked better than I expected. Great thinking.” 

“Still not forgiven for accidentally firing the movers?” 

“Nope.” Arpi halted the bicycle at the top step. “But closer to it.” The chairs swayed. “Hey, careful.” She took a step backward. 

From below, Mikaela called, far too slowly, “Arpi,  _ be careful! _ ” just as her ankle slipped off of the top step onto the step below and sent her toppling backward. Jayden dove after her with both arms outstretched to grab her by the shoulders to keep her from flipping head over heels all the way down the staircase. The leaning tower of chairs cascaded toward them.

When Jayden’s warm hands let go of Arpi’s shirt, she fell to the side, landing on the floor of the bleachers on her back. All the air  _ whooshed _ out of her lungs. “Jayden—” She tried to call out, but her voice was a croak. The bleachers rumbled and roared. She pushed herself up onto her elbows to watch in horror as the wave of chairs caught Jayden square in the chest and pushed him down the flight of stairs. The bicycle rolled after them, wheels and gears and plastic and snapping and Jayden disappearing under an ocean of folding chairs on the floor of the stadium. 

Hauling herself back up onto her feet, Arpi testily limped down the stairs over the fallen chairs, leaning heavily on the railing to keep from putting pressure on one of her ankles—it was twisted, but she wasn’t going to sit around while Jayden was buried alive in folding chairs. She reached the place where he lay first. Tommy and Mikaela ran across the floor and flanked her. 

“Did I just see Jayden save your life?” Tommy asked.

“No, he—Jayden!” Arpi tossed away a few chairs until his shirt was visible, and then she dragged him up out of the wreckage.

“I’m pretty sure I did, he totally pushed you out of the way, y’know, like it was an oncoming train, sacrificing himself—”

“ _ Tommy! _ ” Mikaela snapped, and he fell silent. 

Jayden blinked a few times. “Whoa, guys, I just had the weirdest dream…” He looked up at Mikaela, at Arpi, at Tommy. “It was like, you know, the ocean, but instead, it was folding chairs.” He laughed, and then he cut himself off, looking at Arpi. “Hey, are you okay? You fell.”

“ _ I  _ fell? You got knocked down a flight of stairs!” 

His brow furrowed. “I did?” 

Mikaela pressed her lips into a thin line. “Yeah… you did. Can you sit up? What hurts?” Jayden pushed himself upright, looking right as rain. “What do you remember?” 

“Arpi falling. But I feel fine. Let’s get back to work.”

Arpi shook her head. “No, no—you’re going to the hospital.” Tommy and Mikaela both wanted to argue. “He doesn’t remember, he must have hit his head. He needs to go to the hospital.”

“No, Arpi, really, I’m fine.”

“You’re forty! You’re past the age where you can fall down a flight of stairs and bounce at the bottom.” 

The teenagers continued to collect chairs and set them up as if nothing had happened at all. The lifetime of active shooter drills had desensitized them to emergency situations. Jayden disregarded Arpi’s recommendations, rising to his feet. “Nope, I’m fine. I’m extra soft. I never get hurt! And hey, look, now all the chairs are at the bottom of the stairs. Less work for us.” 

Her jaw hung open as he stood and gathered more seats, following Orly and her friends to add another row of chairs. “I can’t believe it.” 

“We can’t  _ make _ him go to the hospital—”

“No, I can’t believe I fell three feet and twisted my ankle and he fell almost a whole story and doesn’t have a scratch on him!” 

Tommy raised his eyebrows. “Well, that’s physics for you.” 

The sun set, and the buses arrived, and Arpi refused to give in, so she sat on the bleachers with her ankle wrapped up in bandages and ice, elevated on one of those godforsaken chairs, and when someone needed her, she limped around using two chairs as crutches. They unearthed her bicycle, broken beyond repair, from the heaps of chairs on the floor of the stadium. 

The musician tech staff checked out the front of the stadium, where the chairs were facing, as people began to trickle in. “Hey, Arpi, watch this!” Jayden held a chair over his head. “The last one!” He planted it firmly in the corner of the last row, and then everyone took a step back. A small round of applause rose from the adolescents, and Arpi couldn’t help but chuckle as Neil led them away with the promise of Frank Ocean being on the other side of a curtain. 

“Excuse me. Miss?” Arpi lifted her head at the greeting, and a young man with a clipboard wearing a headset trotted down the stairs to talk to her. “Are you with the moving company?” 

“I’m the deputy mayor of Los Angeles.” His mouth formed a confused line. She sighed. “Yes, I suppose I’m overseeing the movement of these chairs.” 

“Well—I’m sorry to tell you this, but…  _ that _ is the front of the stadium.” He pointed to the opposite wall—the wall facing the backs, not the fronts, of the chairs. “All these seats are facing the wrong way, and the first few rows are going to occlude the stage. It all has to be moved before we can perform tonight.” 

Jayden plodded over to them. “Hey, guys, what’s up? C’mon, Arpi, let’s go party with Frank.”

“Jayden?”

“Yeah?” 

“You are not forgiven.” 


End file.
